


tiny lions

by deniigiq



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Cats, Gen, Paranoia, Pets, Season/Series 04, Sometimes a cat is just a cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:54:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22650580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “It’s an agent,” Melanie decided with her gaze ever narrowing at her mug. “It’s just a matter of figuring out whose.”(The Admiral comes to visit the Archives.)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims & Basira Hussain & Melanie King
Comments: 15
Kudos: 200





	tiny lions

**Author's Note:**

> I like barely go here, I'm still only on season 4, but I am compelled (ha) to write tales of the Admiral and his Archivist.
> 
> **I know Martin is not in the Archives at this point in S4, but humor me. I need him to be.

It was unclear if the creature that Jon had brought into the Archives and was currently hoarding in his office was a real animal or an extension of his rapidly declining mental well-being.

As in, a _physical_ extension of his declining mental well-being. Possibly a physical extension of his soul if he still had one.

Martin was holding out that it was just a cat.

Basira asked him what it was like to live with his head in the clouds, and he pointed out that she lived with her nose in a book and was promptly shunned by everyone else on the floor for saying such a thing.

Life was truly unfair. Double standards everywhere you looked.

“It’s not a cat,” Basira continued an hour later, over lunch. “It’s a hairy worm.”

Martin was having no talk of worms in this breakroom. Take it back.

“Fine. It’s a massive, hairy caterpillar.”

Better. Much better.

“It might have once been a cat, but it doesn't matter anymore. We need to check how many eyes it has,” Melanie said seriously at the lip of her mug.

No. No, they did not.

Because it was definitely just a cat. Just a normal cat with two eyes and a load of stripes and an arse that it needed to direct at Jon’s face at all times.

“It’s an agent,” Melanie decided with her gaze ever narrowing at her mug. “It’s just a matter of figuring out whose.”

“If it was an agent, it wouldn’t have a name,” Martin pointed out with a fork.

He received two heavy stares in return. He put the fork down.

“Jon’s trying to pretend it’s nothing,” Melanie said lowly. “He’s brought it in here to watch people—to watch _us_ —even more than he already is.”

“Maybe it _is_ just a cat,” Basira thought out loud.

“Yes, thank you,” Martin said. “See? Just a cat.”

“Only one way to find out, though.”

Wait. No, no. That was not what he meant.

“We gotta catch this cat,” Melanie said furiously.

The cat was orange and fluffy and regal. He was everything Martin thought he had a chance at being if only his hair would lay flat for once, and he’d perched himself on the short bookshelf outside Jon’s office, the one cluttered with more office supplies and fire extinguishers than it had been intended to hold. Jon called this shelf the ‘dressing room,’ by which he meant that it was the station at which he expected every assistant to stop by before bringing him any of the unmarked, disorganized trash that they dredged up from the archive.

He’d accept nothing until it had been through the dressing room and ergo harassed into an illusion of neatness.

A year or so ago, the dressing room had played the part beautifully. It was convenient and stacked with manila envelopes to tuck statements into. It had sheets of sticky tags to print acquisition numbers onto. It had post-it notes of all colors for flagging purposes.

Jon had kept it organized to the point of obsession and had tracked down anyone who had dared to upset its pristine order with fire in his eyes.

These days, it had taken on a more nest-like configuration. Yet another embodiment of Jon’s more recent manic energy.

The cat had settled in amid the chaos with his little pawsies tucked neatly under his chest and his big, plume-like tail resting among the litter of paperclips and loose staples and scissors of varying sizes.

He had yellow-green eyes and a pink nose and he seemed to be smiling.

“Hello, you,” Martin crooned at him. “Aren’t you a pretty thing?”

The cat approved of such worship. He cleaned a paw gracefully.

He didn’t seem too bitey.

It would be nothing to reach over and pick him and his softness up. Nothing at all. Nothing—

“YOUCH.”

The cat hissed.

“Rude,” Martin told him.

The cat batted warningly at him.

“I’m trying to help you,” Martin negotiated.

He attempted another reach.

He was thwarted yet again. And this time, the cat leapt from the dressing room and haughtily stalked in through the crack in Jon’s door, into forbidden territory. Jon made a lilting sound inside to welcome him.

Martin reported his failure to the others with, well, a sense of failure.

“Martin,” Basira said.

He _knew_.

“Martin you are 6 feet tall. This thing is the size of a footstool.”

He _knew_ , alright?

“Martin.”

He wasn’t here for judgement. He was here for solutions.

Basira scoffed in amusement.

“I’ll catch him,” she said.

An hour later and the was cat shit all over the archives. Jon, having burst out of his office at the commotion, had since perched himself on a wobbly piece of Tupperware so that he could give Basira a piece of his mind straight to her face.

He told her that if she ever, _ever_ chased the Admiral around like that ever again, he’d never forgive her.

She said she was cool with that.

Jon balked.

Well steamed, he swept up his feline companion and promised him pointedly that all these people would apologize to him duly or else face his (Jon’s) wrath. He grimaced over his shoulder at Basira once this was done.

She smacked her gum.

Jon started to blanch with fury. He locked his office door behind him this time.

“Oh no, it’s definitely an agent,” Melanie hissed, peering out around the breakroom’s threshold.

It wasn’t.

“Martin, if you’re not going to be helpful, be somewhere else. Look. He’s guarding it. Like a horcux.”

“His name is the Admiral,” Martin sighed. “Jon says he’s his ex’s cat.”

“Lies.”

Right. Obviously. Martin had forgotten who he was talking to.

“What does it want with us?” Melanie demanded in the direction of Jon’s door where the Admiral was busily sticking a paw out and batting at nothing.

“Probably not to be scared shitless,” Martin postulated.

He was relegated to the storeroom now.

Which, like so many other things at the Institute, was uncalled for and patently unfair.

He was just trying to advocate for this cat. For Jon. Jon clearly felt strongly for the Admiral. Martin hadn’t seen him break out the Tupperware to shout at someone for ages now, too busy had he been being mutilated and slowly transformed into something only adjacently human.

The cat really seemed to bring him back to base. It was a good distraction. It was probably therapeutic. Martin had seen Jon stroking it and had heard him chatting to it over the last day or so.

It was the calmest Martin had heard him in nearly a year now.

He sighed while stuffing boxes back on shelves.

He didn’t like it, but he knew what he had to do.

“TRAITOR.”

The Admiral purred happily on Martin’s shoulders. He was much friendlier when there were soft kitty treats involved.

“You’re working for _him_.”

Melanie was going to have an aneurysm.

“Melanie,” Martin reminded her gently, “We’re _all_ working for him.”

Melanie scowled, then sneered at the Admiral, who gazed down upon her from his new throne with a placid expression. Martin felt his tail sway smugly. He couldn’t help it, though, he scratched at the little guy’s ears and got his face rubbed up against for his trouble.

Melanie pointed a single, silent finger at him.

“I trusted you,” she said.

“No, you didn’t,” Martin said.

“I _could_ have.”

Okay, so they’d reached this stage of paranoia.

“I could have, Martin. I _could have_.”

Where was Basira?

Basira accepted the cat onto her shoulders and the Admiral, surprisingly, didn’t seem to mind being handed over to his once-enemy like a sack of flour. Really, he seemed to have forgotten his trauma completely. He was almost excited to be placed on her shoulders and slumped over them to purr happily. Martin understood; Basira did, after all, have little beads on her hijab perfect for chewing on.

Melanie did not understand.

Melanie was horrified and betrayed by the person she trusted most now.

She was going to kill this cat.

She wasn’t subtle about it. She stood on her toes to glare into the Admiral’s eyes up on Basira’s shoulder and told him that this was war and she wouldn’t be taken in by the likes of him.

She left the stacks for an ominous half and hour and returned wearing huge leather gloves which she used to pluck the Admiral, snarling, off Basira’s shoulder. She walked him, held out stiffly in front of her, back to Jon’s office and told him to keep his entity in there with him, or, so help her God, she’d stuff it into a cursed vase.

Jon appeared at his door to snatch the Admiral out of her arms and tell her to get ahold of herself in a less than understanding way. He slammed his door. Melanie told him through it that she was watching him.

“At least they’re talking now?” Basira offered.

Jon emerged from his office in a bleary tumble of limbs and wove around Admiral’s crying and trotting at his knees into the breakroom. Martin watched him turn on the kettle and collapse at the sink in there. Basira pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow at him, then at Martin.

The silence was suffocating.

Martin groaned and got up.

He went into the kitchenette.

“You okay, Jon?” he asked.

He got unintelligible mumbling in return.

“Why don’t you have a sandwich?” Martin tried. “You’ve been in your office all day.”

The Admiral leapt up from the floor onto the counter and pawed at Jon’s face. The little bumping seemed to snap him out of his daze immediately.

“Oh, you’re hungry,” he told the cat like Martin wasn’t there. “Here, let me find you somethin—DEAR LORD.”

Martin took in a breath and waited.

“How long have you—how long have you been there, Martin?” Jon asked him.

“About a minute.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t you have a sandwich, Jon?” Martin asked again.

Jon considered this, then jerked at the Admiral pawing at him again expectantly.

“Yes,” he said, opening and rummaging through the little green bag he’d set on the counter when he’d gotten in that day. He liberated a can of cat food from it, then went hunting for a can opener.

“Yes?” Martin drawled.

“Hm?”

“Sandwich?”

“Oh, right. Yes. I’ll make one.”

There was no need to make one. There was a collection from Tesco’s in the fridge. Jon seemed impervious to this explanation however, so preoccupied was he in feeding the cat.

Martin managed to lure both archivist and cat to the table with sandwiches and tea. He left Jon there to frown at the walls and then went back to attempting to digitize statements in the most painstaking, hand-typed way possible. Jon didn’t want them digitized, really, but he no longer seemed to care what the assistants spent their time doing when they weren’t checking up on leads for him.

The Admiral abandoned Jon to his dazing after a few minutes and came out to lay on Martin’s keyboard.

It was cute.

Melanie threatened to batter him with a leather-bound tome the size of her head.

That was less cute.

Jon took the cat home at the end of the day. He flew out of his office, scooped the Admiral up by his squishy kitty armpits, and announced that he would be back before eight. And then he was off. The green bag in the breakroom stayed.

Melanie snuck in there and buried it in the first-aid drawer.

“I’ve had a think about it,” Basira said at seven. “And I think we deserve a mascot.”

Oh?

“Like a cat?” Martin asked.

“Yeah. You know. An animal. They can sense things coming before we can. Would be useful,” Basira said. “Not to mention that they seem to make our fearless leader a bit more human.”

Well, that was certainly true.

“I like cats,” Martin told her.

“I was thinking a pit bull.”

Eugh. No. Too big. Too many teeth. Block heads.

A cat was much more preferable, and they wouldn’t have to leave the Institute to give it walks.

“How about a rabbit then?” Basira tried. “One of the red-eyed ones. If we get two, we’ll have emergency food supplies after a while.”

Martin felt sick.

“Maybe we should just pay Jon’s ex to rent her cat,” he said.

Basira thought that that was less fun.

Jon said no to the mascot. Predictably.

“I was only doing Georgie a favor,” he jittered. “Besides, the Admiral doesn’t like the dark.”

Martin didn’t like it either.

“How about a rabbit, then?” Basira tried.

Jon paused with a steaming mug of tea in his hand and his face went blank.

“No,” he said flatly.

“Pitbull.”

“No.”

“Squirrel.”

“Where on earth are you going to get a squirrel?” he demanded.

“Outside. You know. Places,” Basira said.

Jon stared at her.

“I’m going to sleep,” he announced.

Basira watched him weave his way back to his office door. She turned back to Martin.

“That wasn’t a no,” she pointed out.

“Wasn’t a yes, either,” Martin reminded her.

“Wasn’t a no, though,” Basira said.

Martin stared. Basira stared back.

“We’re not stealing a squirrel,” he said.

“Get your coat.”

“Basira. No. We’re not—”

“Get your _coat_.”

She was so scary when she looked at him like that. So scary.

“I’m so sorry, Jon,” he whispered miserably as he went to lift his coat from the back of his chair.

“ _Martin_.”

“I’m coming.”


End file.
